An expert advisory panel said that US FDA should authorize Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.
An expert advisory panel on Friday said that the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) should authorize Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.
In a report on GMA News Online, a panel of expert advisers to the US FDA voted in favor of authorizing the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, bringing it an important step closer to a United States rollout.
The Food and Drug Administration was likely to authorize the said vaccine for emergency use within a day or so, making it the third COVID-19 vaccine available in the United States and the only COVID-19 vaccine that required a single shot.
READ ALSO: Johnson & Johnson Submits Emergency Use Listing To WHO For COVID-19 Vaccine
The panel consisting of infectious disease experts, doctors, and medical researchers voted unanimously that the benefits of the said vaccine outweigh its risks in people age 18 and above.
Johnson & Johnson had said that it would be able to ship 3 million to 4 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine next week if it received the emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration, as expected.
Over 50 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered nationwide, a milestone highlighted by US President Joe Biden on Thursday.
However, the emergence of highly-contagious new COVID-19 variants had only enhanced the urgency to get hundreds of millions more people vaccinated against a coronavirus disease that had claimed the lives of over half a million people in the United States.
READ ALSO: Johnson & Johnson Requests EUA For COVID-19 Vaccine
On Friday, the head of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) expressed concern that a recent decline in COVID-19 cases in the United States may be stalling.
In its clinical trial, the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine overall was 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 cases compared with a placebo.
Johnson & Johnson’s clinical trial was underway when the new COVID-19 variants were circulating and even prevalent in several countries where it was tested.
Still, its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations 28 days after inoculation and there were no COVID-19 deaths among those who received the vaccine dose.
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